Mr. William Murray Bradshaw, commonly called by his last two names, was the son of a lawyer of some note for his acuteness, who marked out his calling for him in having him named after the great Lord Mansfield.  Murray Bradshaw was about twenty-five years old, by common consent good-looking, with a finely formed head, a searching eye, and a sharp-cut mouth, which smiled at his bidding without the slightest reference to the real condition of his feeling at the moment.  This was a great convenience; for it gave him an appearance of good-nature at the small expense of a slight muscular movement which was as easy as winking, and deceived everybody but those who had studied him long and carefully enough to find that this play of his features was what a watch maker would call a detached movement.

He had been a good scholar in college, not so much by hard study as by skilful veneering, and had taken great pains to stand well with the Faculty, at least one of whom, Byles Gridley, A. M., had watched him with no little interest as a man with a promising future, provided he were not so astute as to outwit and overreach himself in his excess of contrivance.  His classmates could not help liking him; as to loving him, none of them would have thought of that.  He was so shrewd, so keen, so full of practical sense, and so good-humored as long as things went on to his liking, that few could resist his fascination.  He had a way of talking with people about what they were interested in, as if it were the one matter in the world nearest to his heart.  But he was commonly trying to find out something, or to produce some impression, as a juggler is working at his miracle while he keeps people’s attention by his voluble discourse and make-believe movements.  In his lightest talk he was almost always edging towards a practical object, and it was an interesting and instructive amusement to watch for the moment at which he would ship the belt of his colloquial machinery on to the tight pulley.  It was done so easily and naturally that there was hardly a sign of it.  Master Gridley could usually detect the shifting action, but the young man’s features and voice never betrayed him.

He was a favorite with the other sex, who love poetry and romance, as he well knew, for which reason he often used the phrases of both, and in such a way as to answer his purpose with most of those whom he wished to please.  He had one great advantage in the sweepstakes of life:  he was not handicapped with any burdensome ideals.  He took everything at its marked value.  He accepted the standard of the street as a final fact for to-day, like the broker’s list of prices.